Pan-blue camp's victory relies on 313 rally: Wang Jin-pyng

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-People First Party (PFP) alliance yesterday announced the details of its campaign rally tomorrow, stressing that the alliance's victory of the presidential election would be clinched at this rally.

Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), who also heads the pan-blue campaign headquarters, yesterday announced that the official slogans of the rally are: "Change the president and save Taiwan" and "Work for the economy and work for peace."

The theme for the march is: "The No.2 [candidate] will win the election, the second rotation of political parties will come true."

"The KMT-PFP alliance invites people who love Taiwan and have complaints about the economic condition, educational reform and unemployment to join the rally," Wang said at a news conference yesterday at the alliance's headquarters.

"I urged our supporters to bring the spirit of Gandhi into full play, to join the rally spontaneously and establish a model of democracy," Wang said, encouraging supporters to walk to the rally sites if they cannot acquire transportation.

Wang asked their supporters to wear blue or orange T-shirts to the march and bring along "anything that can make a noise."

"All the participants will start making a noise at exactly 3:20pm, which corresponds with the date of the presidential election, March 20, and say aloud that they want to change the president," said Wang, who spoke in Hoklo, commonly known as Taiwanese, throughout the news conference.

He said the rally is important to the alliance and would have a profound influence on its supporters.

"The KMT-PFP alliance's victory relies on this campaign rally," he said.

At the news conference, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), the alliance's national campaign manager, called on pan-blue supporters to heed the "five noes" at the rally: no conflict with those who intentionally provoke them, no reaction to those who insult them by words, no response to false accusations, no reply to any slander from pan-green supporters, and no trash left afterwards.

"Our appeal is `vote for change,' and we invite all the supporters of the Democratic Progressive Party to join us," said Ma, wearing a red ribbon emblazoned with the word "change" on his head.

"But we don't want to see people trying to create conflict intentionally," he said.